Going bigger with Chaos

Hey everybody!
Time for the third and final blog of my mini-series, where I’ve been looking at growing my existing armies in the hope of having larger-scale games in the future, and this time it’s the turn of something that I’ve only recently started to plan out, the Chaos force! It was only towards the end of last year that I started thinking about building up a Chaos army, with the inspiration coming primarily from the arrival of Blackstone Fortress and all of the weird and wonderful goodness therein.

This post is also a bit of a cheat, as I’ve not yet finalised how I want the force to look. Rather, I’m waiting patiently for the new boxed set Shadowspear, which should not only bring me some interesting marines for a Primaris force, but also updated Black Legion miniatures that, from the look of the teaser trailer, should be off the charts awesome! So let’s ramble for a bit about the new stuff we know about, as well as what I hope we’ll see coming out alongside it.

The army I like to play tends to have a fairly decent balance, I think, between shooting stuff and beating stuff. From what I know of the forces of Chaos, then, I’ve been able to draw up something that I am really quite excited about playing, but the list remains quite small-scale, formed mainly of Cultists and the odd piece here and there that I like the look of.

I remain determined to somehow include the Blackstone Fortress models in my list, and have thus far included a patrol detachment of Obsidius Mallex with both companies of Traitor Guard and a Rogue Psyker. I’ve not put the additional Legionaries in there because I don’t yet know how things are going to look once we get the Shadowspear box. Will we get 10-man squads with different rules/options to the generic Heretic Astartes squad? Time will tell, I suppose – and that time might be sooner than we think, with the 80-day countdown for Vigilus to fall drawing ever closer!

We can already get bolt pistols and chainswords in a group of bolter-wielding Chaos marines, which I always find a bit weird somehow, but I suppose they don’t pay much attention to the Codex Astartes, after all! I really hope these chaps are the regular marines and not push-fit, though I suppose even if they aren’t, GW these days are producing a lot of models that will only go together one way, rather than the old style of marines where you have the legs, torso and arms all separate to allow for a variety of poses. Sad face. I suppose they do look amazing with all of the added detail, so it’s a decent enough trade-off.

Releasing a new kit of marines does of course beg the question, will the current finecast Havocs kit be released in glorious multi-part plastic, also?

In addition to regular marines, we’ve been promised new Obliterators, and we’ve already seen two of them between the trailer above and the preview on the Community site. Three Obliterators cost 195 points, which feels quite the investment, so I’m not quite sure how I feel about including these chaps in the list just yet. Though I’m sure I’ll eventually want to have some for a dose of heavy-hitting pain teleport striking in!

I do like the look of the Master of Possessions, who I assume will be an HQ choice with some kind of buff for these sorts of daemonic fleshmetal creatures. So depending on how things go with including the Obliterators in the list, I may well be fitting this chap in, also! Although I love the model so much, I might just use him as a Dark Apostle if I don’t manage to fit him in for his actual role.

I mean, look how sexy this beast is!!

I’m guessing that the rules for these things will be coming in the next Vigilus book, much like Marneus Calgar had updated rules in the last one. Whether we end up with a new Codex Heretic Astartes, who knows. I wouldn’t say Chapter Approved brought about a particularly significant number of points changes in comparison to anybody else, so I would only really expect to see a new book if we got a particularly large change in unit types, as we seem to be in for with Primaris Marines.

But enough of that!

So far, then, I’ve managed to slip in some interesting units, as far as I’m concerned, though I do want to include more of the Blackstone Fortress stuff – specifically, I want to have more than just 7 Traitor Guard. Much like Cultists, I feel like we should be able to field hordes of these guys – which brings me on to my main point, I suppose.

While the Shadowspear box does sound amazing, without even considering the Primaris aspects of the box, I find myself hoping that the rumours are true, and we actually get to have real releases of the Blackstone Fortress stuff in proper multi-part plastic goodness with a regular box release. I’m hoping for 10-man (at the very least!) Traitor Guard, and five-man Negavolt Cultists – we’ll most likely get Beastmen as well, of course, though I’m not so fussed on those guys. I don’t really hold out much hope that we’ll see anything further along these lines, though the Genestealer Cults release has shown that GW are very good at surprising us with a release schedule that just takes over the world, so maybe we’ll see additional stuff to flesh-out the release of these random elements of Chaos.

Should we actually get Traitor Guard released in this manner, then I’ll pretty much give up on any hope of GW bringing back the Dark Vengeance Cultists – I’m really glad that I found my own guys, of course, but I do find myself feeling a bit sorry for those who only know of Cultists through the five-man box available currently. Still, Cawdor gangers do make excellent conversion fodder, so I suppose I shouldn’t get too down on it. But it would be so much better if these kits would see the light of day again!

I am nevertheless very interested in seeing what we get for Chaos in the next month or so. How I eventually build my army is going to be a matter of some thought, for sure, though I do like the idea of having some of the marines alongside the chaff Cultists, backed up with daemon engines like the spider-thing and Forgefiends/Maulerfiends. Should look pretty damn good on the table, I reckon!